Inappropriate Drugs and The Elderly

At least six million elderly Americans may be exposed each year to potentially hazardous precribing, says an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

A study, conducted by the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research to examine the amount of inappropriate prescribing for Americans aged 65 and over who do not live in nursing homes, found that prescription drugs were used by 81.9% of all older persons during 1987, the year for which the information was gathered, using data from the National Medical Expenditure Survey. 23% of all people aged 65 and over (64 million) had received at least one potentially inappropriate drug, it found, and 28.7% of those prescribed any medication received at least one potentially inappropriate drug.

"Prescribing patterns for most of the drugs we examined have probably not changed dramatically since 1987," say the researchers. They add that their study, the first of its type, probably underestimates the incidence of inappropriate prescribing in the elderly, since it did not consider excessive drug dosage or duration, medication interactions or the prescribing of a sometimes useful drug in an inappropriate clinical situation.